Author's Note:
This story has been bouncing around in my head for a while. It started off with a dream I had back in 2013 that I thankfully took the time to write down and began to take on a life of its own sometime last year when I was sifting through my documents looking for story ideas. It gets into some themes that are a bit more serious than much of my other work and draws from some experiences I had in high school (I'll explain more about that in a note at the end of the story to avoid spoilers here).
Before you ask, yes, I am working on the next part of Quite Contrary. I just took a short break from it because I was sad about some of the trades the real life Bruins made, so writing about a fictional version of the Bruins kind of stung. I'm largely over that now and will have an update out for you soon. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this story as much as I do. The title comes from my favorite Halestorm song, which I'd definitely recommend if you want to give it a listen. As always, the characters in this story are all completely fictional and over the age of eighteen.
Love Bites (So Do I)
The heat of the stage lights warmed my skin. The cheers of the crowd coursed through my veins like a drug. My fingertips bore the tell-tale indents of guitar strings from my Fender Strat. I was sweaty, achy, and exhausted, but I loved every single second of it.
"You have been a
fantastic
audience!" I called out to the sea of people packed into the bar, my voice betraying hints of raspiness after two hours of singing, screaming, and death growls. "We'd stay here with you all night if we could, but I think Pete might actually kill us if we tried."
The man in question, who owned the venue, chuckled appreciatively as he leaned against the bar.
"Thanks for coming out tonight, and get home safe," I continued before ending with our band's signature sign off: "We are Murphy's Lawyers, and this court is fuckin' adjourned!"
As the crowd gave a final roar of approval, my three bandmates and I waved goodbye and headed backstage. I lunged for the bottle of water I'd left on the folding table by the stage door, gulping it all down in less than ten seconds.
"Pace yourself, Em," Miles Murphy, our bassist, chuckled. "You don't wanna drink so fast that you hurl again."
I scowled at him. "That was one time, dipshit."
He laughed harder at that, ignoring my slight as he always did. Swearing and insincere insults were one of my love languages, and he damn well knew it after more than two years of friendship.
Our band had formed almost by accident during our first semester of college. Angry that his RA had confiscated his beer, Miles had placed his amplifier against their shared wall, cranked it up as high as it would go, and played the most deafening version of the bass line from Slipknot's "Psychosocial" that I'd ever heard in my life. I'd been in my room one floor up but immediately came down to investigate and scream-sing the lyrics. I'd never said more than three words to Miles before, but he'd accepted my sudden presence in his room without question.
By the end of the song, two more headbanging spectators had arrived. By the end of the evening, the four of us had set up a jam session for the following Saturday. By the end of the week, Murphy's Lawyers had emerged from the primordial soup of our imaginations into a tangible entity.
"Great crowd tonight," observed Kane Harrison, our lead guitarist. A lanky ginger, he spoke in a deep drawl reflective of his New Orleans roots. He placed his Gibson Flying V gently in its case before carefully closing and latching it. That guitar was his baby, and heaven forbid anyone else should so much as breathe on it wrong.
Miles grinned. "Em had them eating out of the palm of her hand."
"She always does."
My heart beat just a little bit faster at the compliment from the fourth and final member of the band: Jesse McAllister, our drummer.
What could I say about Jesse? He was soft-spoken and shy, almost painfully so at times, but his blue eyes lit up with a childlike excitement when he talked about things that mattered to him. His sandy hair fell in untamed waves past his shoulders and flew around him like a tornado when he played. I was fairly certain he hadn't so much as trimmed it the entire time I'd known him, unlike his beard, which he kept short and neatly groomed. He looked like a Viking about to raid an English village, a bit like a young James Hetfield, but the only thing he'd ever raided was the fridge at three AM. He was the sort of person who ran the constant risk of forgetting to put on pants before leaving the house while somehow maintaining an almost encyclopedic knowledge of random eighties metal trivia. He'd sat through getting at least three tattoos (that I knew of) without flinching but wept through every single sad animal movie we'd ever watched.
He was perfect.
I'd been in love with Jesse almost the entire time I'd known him. I could remember the exact moment it happened, too: the band had been together for about a month, and we'd just played our first ever public performance at the annual freshman talent show. He'd absolutely nailed the drum part for our finale, Judas Priest's "Painkiller," and I'd praised him effusively the moment we'd left the stage.
Blushing, he'd brushed off my compliments before digging around in his bag and handing me a bottle. "Here, I brought you some water. I figured you'd need it after those killer vocals."
Noticing there was only one bottle, I'd raised an eyebrow. "Don't you need some as well?"
He'd cocked his head as though the thought of self-preservation hadn't even occurred to him before that exact moment. "Huh. I guess I didn't think of that," he'd replied with a bashful smile. "I just wanted to make sure you had some."
That moment, that look in his eyes, had been imprinted on my memory ever since. I'd already developed a crush on Jesse before that night, but his almost jarringly wholesome concern for my wellbeing had pushed me over the edge into something far deeper.
That of course raised the obvious question of why I'd never acted on my feelings. Why had I never taken those few steps down the hallway to Jesse's room in our band's off-campus house and kissed him senseless?
At first, it was just plain old fear: fear of rejection, fear of destroying our friendship, fear of breaking up the band, and so on.
More recently, though, a second reason had emerged, and like a demon summoned by merely thinking its name, she appeared backstage.
"Babe, you almost done? We're already late for the mixer with the Delta Gammas."
Amanda King. The bitch.
God, I hated that stuck-up cunt. It wasn't just that she'd been dating the man I loved for several months. She treated him like absolute garbage, dismissing his feelings, demanding complete fealty to her whims, subtly putting him down at every turn. And he just took it. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how or why, but she'd turned him into a complete doormat and it was killing me.
"Um, yeah," he meekly answered her. "I just need to help—"
"They don't need your help," she brusquely interrupted. "You guys can handle putting your doo-dads away yourselves, right?"
"Well..." Miles started to respond.
She didn't let him finish. "
Great
. See, babe? It's fine. Now let's go."
"Alright," Jesse sighed. "I guess I'll see you guys back home later..."
"We're staying at my place tonight."
"...or tomorrow, I guess."
With that, he shuffled out after her into the night.
The moment the door closed behind them, the vitriol I'd been barely holding back spewed forth.
"God, I hate that fucking bitch. Every time she opens her mouth, I want to smash her face into a brick wall."
Kane chuckled, knowing full well how I felt about our bandmate's girlfriend. "Tell us how you really feel, Em."
I ignored him. "You know she's tried to get him to skip at least three different gigs since they started dating? She always gives him these backhanded compliments, like 'oh, it's so
brave
of you to want to be a music teacher instead of getting a real job' and shit like that. And
every single fucking time
I'm in the same room with both of them, she finds a way to insult my voice or my looks just subtly enough that he won't call her out on it. God, she's turning him into such a pushover and I fucking
hate
it!"
"Em," Miles cut into my rant, gently placing his hands on my shoulders to calm me down. "Chill. Yes, Amanda sucks. But Jesse needs to figure that out for himself. You know how defensive he gets whenever we question their relationship."
I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. "Yeah, I know. She's just... ugh."
Kane shook his head in amusement. "It's amazing, really. If you'd told me two years ago that
Emeline Dempsey
would ever hate another human being this much, I'd have said you were full of shit. You're like that dog from
Up
: you like everyone the second you meet them."
"I'm allergic to passive-aggressive cunty sorostitutes who hate metal," I countered.
He shrugged. "No arguments here. I'm not exactly in the Amanda King fan club myself."
Miles hummed his agreement before beginning the grunt work of hauling our instruments and equipment out to his van. Sighing, I went to help him, Kane following close behind.
I knew Miles was right. Whenever any of us tried to point out to Jesse how terribly Amanda treated him, he'd shut down completely. I sometimes wondered if deep down he knew we were right and just didn't want to face the reality or if he really was just that blind. Kane had once joked that the sex must've been incredible for Jesse to put up with a personality so horrible, but after witnessing me puking into a nearby trashcan at that suggestion, he'd kept further such comments to himself.
Jesse came back to the house late the next morning, letting himself in quietly and looking rather worse for wear. Knowing he'd need a chance to recharge his social batteries after a night of being paraded around like a show dog to Amanda's vapid sorority friends, I gave him some space. It was hard for me to understand how a fulfilling relationship could leave anyone so emotionally exhausted all the time, but I kept my mouth shut and chose not to dwell on it.
That evening, as I sat at my desk drafting an essay for my communications class, the muffled sound of experimental chord progressions came drifting down the hall. Curious and drawn to the plaintive tones, I wandered into Jesse's room to find him gazing pensively at his computer screen. He moved back and forth between the music notation software he had open and the keyboard he had set up next to his desk, testing out different chord structures.
